Ci.lancaster.ma.us

Town of Lancaster
Community Choice Power Supply Program
Frequently Asked Questions
Today, the Town of Lancaster is announcing that it has selected Constellation Energy Power Choice, Inc. as its competitive power supplier under the Town’s new “Community Choice Power Supply” initiative. The selection was made on a competitive basis. What is the “Community Choice Power Supply” initiative? The Community Choice Power Supply benefits local residents by creating competition among energy suppliers. This helps to ensure competitive rates and to endow the Town with local control over energy supplies. It also provides Town residents and small businesses with energy price stability, and offers opportunities for cost savings. What is this program intended to achieve? The Community Choice Power Supply initiative is intended to provide local energy services in a way that stabilizes costs, maximizes opportunities for cost savings, promotes competition and ensures local control over energy supplies. Where did this program originate? In 1997, the Massachusetts legislature approved measures that promoted energy supply competition and provided local municipalities with the option of introducing supply-related competition and customer choice within their jurisdictions. The program was approved at the Town Meeting in May 2012. The Constellation family of retail electricity and natural gas suppliers (www.constellation.com), are subsidiaries of Exelon Corp., and are leading competitive retail suppliers of power, natural gas and energy products and services for homes and businesses across the continental United States. Constellation’s retail businesses serve more than 100,000 business and public sector customers, including more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100, and nearly one million residential customers. Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC) is the nation’s leading competitive energy provider, with approximately $33 billion in annual revenues. Headquartered in Chicago, Exelon has operations and business activities in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. Exelon is the largest competitive U.S. power generator, with approximately 35,000 megawatts of owned capacity comprising one of the nation’s cleanest and lowest-cost power generation fleets. Exelon’s utilities deliver electricity and natural gas to more than 6.6 million customers in central Maryland (BGE), northern Illinois (ComEd) and southeastern Pennsylvania (PECO). Learn more at: www.exeloncorp.com. What do people need to do to receive this electricity? Residents do not need to take any action at all. All eligible customers will be automatically enrolled under this contract, unless they choose to “opt out” and return to National Grid’s “basic service,” or unless they choose another competitive supplier, if one is available. What if residents do not want Constellation as their energy supplier and prefer to stay with supplies provided by National Grid? Residents have the opportunity to easily “opt out” of the program by using a simple mail-in postcard. Will this change residents’ electric bills? Participating customers will continue to receive their monthly bill from National Grid on the same schedule as they do right now. Customers will continue to make single monthly payments to National Grid. Charges for the supply component of electrical service will be indicated on these monthly bills. The utility will also continue to maintain the wires that carry electricity and will continue to read meters. Reliability and quality of service will remain the same. When does this program take effect? The program begins at the December meter reading. FOR MORE INFORMATION, CALL 508-485-5858.

Source: http://www.ci.lancaster.ma.us/pages/lancasterma_energy/FAQ.pdf